


A Piece of the Action

by ninemoons42



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Police, Crimes & Criminals, Interrogation, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-24
Updated: 2011-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-28 00:19:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/301671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42





	A Piece of the Action

**Author's Note:**

  * For [papercutperfect](https://archiveofourown.org/users/papercutperfect/gifts).



  
title: A Piece of the Action  
author: [](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**ninemoons42**](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/)  
word count: 2100  
fandom/pairing: McFassy  
rating: PG-13  
notes: Holiday gift fic for [](http://papercutperfect.livejournal.com/profile)[**papercutperfect**](http://papercutperfect.livejournal.com/). She asked me to write her an AU in which McFassy were cops, based partly on James's jacket in [this photo](http://tumblr.com/ZIJNMxDTMZoK). So I may have accidentally crossed McFassy with the various interrogation room sequences from my favorite police procedural.  
And also, can anyone guess what their "abilities" are?  
Happy holidays, Bloo dear!

  
Michael pushes in through the doors of the police station and they close behind him with a bang. He’s shivering, he’s cranky, he’s hungry, and the caffeine hasn’t quite kicked in yet.

Alex and Zoe, gossiping at the duty desk, turn to look at him at the same time. They could almost look like twins, hellbent on mischief and nearly identical, all the way down to the raised eyebrows.

He grunts as he walks past, waves two fingers in their general direction and turns away irritably, huddling miserably into his coat and cursing the winter and the snow and the fact that it doesn’t really get warm in this police station – not on this floor, anyway.

There’s a burst of malicious laughter behind him and he knows the scowl on his face is enough to frighten off most other cops.

Which is why he is not surprised when he’s hailed from the stairwell and Jason is walking up to him, carrying a couple of folders and wearing his usual mocking expression.

“And a good morning to you, too,” Jason says. “That is quite the scowl you’ve got going on there. Did James not fuck you last night?”

“Who wants to know?”

“Me,” Jason says, cheerfully.

He doesn’t even flinch, give him that much credit. Michael glares at the older man, trying to see if he can kill him with his brain, and Jason simply smirks back, stubbornly remaining on his feet.

The elevator dings loudly and Michael groans and stomps on, and almost doesn’t notice the man in the white lab coat and the Coke-bottle glasses already inside.

“Nic,” Jason says, and Michael looks over his shoulder.

“Hello, Jason – Michael,” Nicholas says without looking up from his book. Some kind of techno-thriller from the looks of the cover. “Just in time for the show, then?”

“Yeah,” Jason says. “Just had to go and pick up some folders for boss-lady.”

“Are those the stats, then?”

Michael watches in the blurred reflections of the elevator doors as Nicholas stows his novel in his pockets and reaches for the documents.

He already knows those papers by heart; it’s practically half his case already, and what he doesn’t already know James will let him crib or copy, if he doesn’t simply read it over James’s shoulder, which he manages to get away with at least once a week. It’s his goal to get away with it every day.

When they step off onto the fourth floor the heating is enough to make Michael sigh quietly and appreciatively. Finally he can get out of his coat and his scarf, though he keeps his jumper and his hat on as he makes a beeline for his desk.

The others are already clustered around Lucas’s laptop. Technically they could have simply listened in on an interrogation from the other side of the glass, but the room was simply not equipped to handle the entire team _and_ the technicians, so Lucas had simply cajoled and bribed Caleb and Rose into splicing his computer in to the live feeds.

Michael walks right past the rest of the department: Jennifer and Edi and the bowl of popcorn and the stained coffee mugs. Jason and Nicholas pull up chairs around Lucas. The older man has managed to detour toward the donuts and is currently trying to eat his snack without getting sugar on his shirt.

There’s a note on Michael’s desk when he gets to it. The paper is folded into an intricate little flower and the message inside is familiar and expected. _Wait for my signal._ The long ascenders and descenders, and the strangely angular quality to the loops.

There’s someone standing behind him.

Even after three years at this station he still hasn’t quite gotten used to having to look down at his chief, instead of up as he’d done when he’d been a newbie and a beat cop. The station jokes that her shoes must already qualify as deadly weapons in their own right, but no one laughs when January’s got that cold, determined look in her eyes.

He stands ramrod straight, and attempts to meet her eyes.

“He’s about to go in – I was talking to him in my office. It’s going to be a nasty one, isn’t it?” she asks.

Michael shrugs and says, “We don’t make him do this shit job first for nothing, do we.” He hopes they all know what they’re doing, though, or else they may have to mop the perp up from the walls and the floor. Not that that wouldn’t be fun, but it might delay their case just a little bit, Michael thinks sardonically.

A loud slam down the corridor is duplicated in stereo on the laptop’s speakers, and there is movement on the monitor. Michael doesn’t really notice that everyone else has leaned forward because it feels like he did, first, and that all of his senses are straining toward the grainy images onscreen.

“I want a lawyer,” the suspect says immediately.

Jennifer rolls her eyes so hard Michael thinks she might break something.

Edi’s comment is short and to the point: “You talk first, you lose. What the fuck, doesn’t he know the rules?”

“Quiet,” Nicholas mutters.

“Just because I read you your damn rights last night, you think you can talk back,” James snorts, quietly, and Michael winces and looks away. He’s only been listening to that burr for the better part of the past twelve months. “Looks like you’ve forgotten what we booked you in for. Terrorism? Good luck finding a lawyer who’ll help you with that, motherfucker.”

James’s voice: rough, weatherbeaten, hoarse because he’s possibly forgotten his cigarettes again, or the heating in his flat has broken down for the third time in four months, or he didn’t manage to eat enough breakfast, which is more than Michael can say for himself and in the end he succumbs to the popcorn and takes a handful from the bowl, hand colliding with January’s, and they shrug at each other without taking their eyes from the laptop.

James is pissed, and it shows in the tension cording his shoulders. The video quality’s just good enough to show how white-knuckled his fists on the table are, and Michael clenches his hands in sympathy.

“Quiet,” Jason says, apropos of nothing. “I think he’s about to do the Sherlock thing.”

“He missed out last time; pretty sure he’s gonna be making up for it now,” Lucas mutters around the rim of his banged-up coffee cup.

Michael smiles tightly to himself. He remembers standing behind the glass for the last interrogation; he remembers James pacing, all but ready to explode. He remembers the frozen shock on the female suspect’s face.

James doesn’t hit women. Neither does Michael.

The fools and luckless bastards they bring into these interrogation rooms don’t need to know that.

James’s next words make the hairs on the back of Michael’s neck prickle with – excitement? Recognition? The occasional, but always overwhelming, urge to bare his throat to the other man? No, it can’t be that last one, because he recognizes that faintly sickened, take-no-prisoners expression on January’s face.

It’s the one they see most often when she’s come storming in with the cavalry.

Bang, goes something.

Nicholas whistles softly under his breath.

Michael goes rigid.

James is speaking again. His fist is still shaking against the shatterproof one-way glass. “So you’re not going to talk, fine, I’ll do it for you. This is hardly the first time we’ve had you in here. Rap sheet as long as my fucking arm. You’ve been sleeping at the dumpster ’round the block again, haven’t you, though it’s been at least eighteen hours since you last had a proper kip. And you smell about twice as bad as that.”

“A what?” Lucas asks.

“Nap. Period of time spent sleeping,” Michael says. The boy ought to be used to James already. That Scottish accent grows rougher the angrier he gets, an unmistakable tell, and it’s nearly gotten his ass killed at least once.

It’s a good thing, Michael thinks, that people tend to underestimate James – underestimate them both, really, but James is the important piece in the puzzle, in his puzzle.

Lucky them.

“ – You’re lying about the guns, as you are about everything and anything, really,” James continues. Pause. “Perhaps not everything – you’ve at least a little remnant of reptile sense in that head of yours. You’ve not fired a gun, but you’ve certainly been handling them. Now all that remains is for me to figure out who for. Not a lot of options, I know. Give me a few minutes. I’m a little slow today. Need to eat a second breakfast.”

Michael laughs and cracks his knuckles, and he puts a hand on January’s shoulder. “That’s the second signal.”

“I know. I’m just going to assume you know everything he does.”

“Not everything.” He lets the grin widen, though it still doesn’t quite reach his eyes. He taps his temple. “Just enough to get the job done.”

“Shoo,” she says. Her lips are turned up in a hint of a smirk.

He turns the corner. James is leaning against the wall next to one of the doors, arms crossed over his chest. His eyes are closed. He seems to be asleep.

Michael clears his throat anyway.

“If you move, stay on his right side,” James says, without looking up. “Blind spot.”

“He kept tracking you while you were pacing,” Michael says. “Turned in the same direction every time.”

“Shit, why do you even still keep me around.”

“I can’t believe you’re asking me that question, not when you already know I’ve got a list,” Michael says, with a nonchalance that he pulls around his shoulders like a suit of armor.

James huffs out a short laugh – and opens his eyes at last. He looks like he needs to eat several square meals and pass out for at least a day. The shadows ringing his eyes are about to overtake his face.

Michael thinks he probably looks worse and knows there’s a reason he’s been avoiding looking at himself in the mirror, even when he’s scraping the five-o’clock shadow off. He also knows that neither of them is going to get any real sleep until this damn case has been cracked.

Thankfully, today, that might just be in sight.

“Go,” he says, and steps toward the door, one hand already reaching for the doorknob.

James intercepts him, seizes his wrist in his cold hand. “Come out of that one alive.”

“Don’t I always?”

“Not when I have to pick up the pieces.” There is no more laughter in James’s voice. He scuffs his feet on the tiled floor.

Michael puts his hand on top of James’s head, presses down gently. “I’ll do what I can.”

He can still feel James slouching and eyeing him when he steps through the door into the interrogation room, and closes it behind himself.

Michael half-falls into the empty chair, stretches out and gets comfortable though the hard seats are hell on his bones and his backside. When he pulls his mobile phone out and scrolls to Angry Birds, he makes sure the game is visible to anyone watching behind the glass.

This is his tactic. It’s not pretty. He designed it expressly to piss people off in a passive-aggressive way. It’s gotten him his results so far. He never really listens to the suspects anyway.

He doesn’t move, keeps his eyes down at all times, and he occasionally deliberately one-stars a level, reacts with irritation and watches the suspect sweat.

Just a little more and he’ll get the answers they need.

Michael catches the suspect muttering and he doesn’t smile; he keeps his eyes on the game. He’s trying to remember it all. He remembers being told to his face he was being transferred to the station for his one specific ability. He remembers pride and the hot glow of challenge in blue eyes, blue eyes looking right at him, insolent and interested.

Michael looks up. A sweep of the room – not the familiar corners and cracks and chips in the paint. A sweep of the suspect, hands snatching at thin air, terror-bright eyes, words in another language.

Without looking at his phone, he sends a message.

 _Hook. Line. Sinker._

He knows the response that comes back, too, by heart.

 _Let’s get the motherfuckers._

And the second message.

 _A good thing we’re always on the same side._

He responds as he watches their suspect babble and crack.

 _You and me against the world._

 _Always._   



End file.
